Facing Rejection from Consulting Firms

Facing rejection from consulting firms is an emotional topic especially with the time and effort candidates put in preparing for the case interview. I recently received this question from a reader about being rejected from all of the consulting jobs they applied for, here is the question and my response to dealing with not getting the offer.

“For a very long time, I have thought that I am at the top tier of candidates for consulting firms, however it seems that reality has proven me wrong. I applied at the top consulting firms, and was rejected from MBB (I was not even offered interviews with them). I did receive interviews from the non-top 3 firms but was not invited back for 2nd round interviews with any of them.

When I followed up to ask for feedback, the consultants either did not reply or told me I was fine. I don't know what is going wrong. What should I do?”

This is a complicated one. So, let me dissect your history one step at a time.

First, I do not know of your academic background or work experiences. But the fact that you did not get an interview from the top three is due to one of two reasons. Either your academic credentials or work experiences were not impressive enough (by their standards) or your cover letter didn't stand out enough. The cover letter is very, very, very important.

It usually takes me two to four hours to write a good cover letter excluding research and networking time.

So getting the interview is a function of 1) your consulting resume, and 2) your cover letter. To solve that problem, make sure the information on your resume is competitive and the cover letter is extremely strong.

Next, lets talk about the situations where you did get the 1st round interview, but did not get the 2nd round interview. In these cases, it means you did not do well on the case.

It does not matter if you had a nice conversation if you did not do well on the case. There are some people I've interviewed, that I really enjoy talking to. I would love to hang out with them. And they were not qualified, so I dinged them.

The fact that nobody will give you any feedback, is hard to interpret. Interviewers don't like to have what they perceive as confrontational conversation. So unfortunately, you can't read too much into that reaction.

If you did not prepare properly, it's entirely possible you have the raw talent but you never developed that talent into a skill, and turned that skill into a consistent habit.

This is the big problem with not preparing or not preparing early enough, if things don't go as planned, you keep wondering, "what if?"

Now, I don't know if you prepared or not, but let's say you prepared like crazy, you used the Look Over My Shoulder® program to do some simulated practice sessions, and you did everything possible to get good at cases and you still got dinged.

Then my conclusion, and you probably don't want to hear this, is that perhaps consulting is not a good fit for you. I wrote an entire blog post on this here.

And to the extent that consulting isn't a good fit, I would encourage you not to feel too disappointed about it.

With some years of perspective behind me, I am firm believer one should manage their career to take advantage of 1) their strengths, 2) their passions/ interests, or 3) both.

There were one or two of my colleagues at McKinsey who basically quit after six months. They were good enough to get through the recruiting process, but they had to force themselves through it. It wasn't natural for them, it wasn't enjoyable for them, and they hated the work.

A simple test to determine if you will like the job is to see if you enjoy the interview process -- yes, enjoy the interview process. So to the extent you've considered all the other possibilities, it may just be possible that consulting isn't the best fit for you.

I doubt you will feel this way in the moment, but in several years you may find it was the best thing to happen to you (I did say it may take a few years to feel this way!).

Here's why.

Assuming you did everything in your control, it suggests you ought find a field that plays to your strengths -- a career that you are ten times more likely to excel in once you are in it.

Consulting is not "everything". There are so many different ways to be successful in life and career, it's ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the on-campus recruiting experience is so distorted. I remember feeling like there were only two jobs in the world available -- being a consultant or being an investment banker.

That's ridiculously untrue (but it sure feels that way at the time because that's who comes to recruit on campus).

Depending on your specific situation, you might want to consider the various options that I suggested above.

And on a personal note, when I went through my recruiting process, I really wanted to go into investment banking--not consulting.

When other kids in high school went to summer camp, I went to Investment Banker camp on Wall Street (I'm serious).

All of my friends who got investment banking offers, were tutored on how investment banking works by me.

I put lots of my friends in college into retirement accounts-- explaining the tax advantages. Basically, I thought of myself as Mr. Investment Banking.

But, despite this interest in investment banking, I could not get past Round 1 at any investment bank.

I got dinged by Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, and more. Not a single 2nd round.

Originally, I was very disappointed because I had my heart set on banking. I started wondering what was wrong with me? Was I going to get a job? (Perhaps this sounds familiar.)

Basically, the bankers somehow all figured out that I was not meant to be a banker. To this day, I still don't know how they made this determination, but that's what they concluded.

And a week or two later, the consulting interviews started. And within days, I was getting first rounds, second rounds, flying around the country for final rounds, and getting tons of offers.

After I got offers from my top two firms, I started canceling final rounds at others, so there would be more offers available to those who were still interviewing.

The year I was hired at McKinsey, they hired 100 Business Analysts globally. Two years later, they asked 90 of the 100 to go get an MBA or get some more experience elsewhere before coming back to the firm.

Ten of the 100 people that remained were promoted to Associate and moved on to the partnership track. I was one of those ten people -- in the top 10% of McKinsey for my start "class" globally.

My point in sharing all this is, all of this started with me getting rejected by ALL the investment banks.

Turns out consulting was totally up my alley. In my work today with my CEO clients where I serve as their confidant and advisor, they are essentially giving me a case interview every day!

I have over a dozen phone calls each week that start something along these lines:

"Victor, our sales got hammered in Q3, the sale pipeline in Q4 is eroding, our margins are down 2% this quarter, what should we do?" (Does this sound familiar?)

For the charity, I'm very fond of Kidpower.org I advise the founder on their marketing strategy, increasing product sales, re-segmenting their markets, and making changes to their product portfolio. (Sound familiar?)

In short, I love this stuff. I do it for work. I do it for charity. I do it for fun. It's so "me".

Well, today it's obvious to me that consulting was a good fit for me. But at the time, I had no idea this would be true.

I thought I was supposed to be banker. And guess what?

Although it was a huge blow to my ego that I got rejected by all the investment banks, I'm really glad they did. Because it gave me great certainty that Investment Banking was notfor me -- so I focused on my second choice, consulting... and never looked back.

So if you've truly given it your all towards getting into consulting (did your homework, practiced like crazy, followed all the advice and tips I've shared), and you still did not get in... maybe, just maybe you might want to take that as a sign to look elsewhere.

In the moment, I know it feels like crap. But taking the decade long view, it might be a brilliant strategic move for your career.

But if you didn't follow all my advice, and you didn't do the hard job of really preparing early and often, then you have a difficult choice to make.

Do you start the process all over again, this time preparing thoroughly?

Or do you look towards your second choice career options, always wondering if maybe you really were good enough to get into consulting, but didn't prepare enough?

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